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the use of their chosen executive. The crown lands were never the property of the people, no, not even of any monarchical government. Not citing the testimony of ages, when all the lands belonged to the chiefs, in 1848 the ruling king reserved these very lands as ‘his private estate,’ and the legislature confirmed this act as the private lands of His Majesty, his heirs and assigns forever. In 1864 the Supreme Court decided that ‘each successor’ could regulate and dispose of the same according to his will and pleasure as private property.

“In 1865 payment was made to Queen Emma in lieu of dower in these lands, although she had not been on the throne, but was the widow of a monarch deceased two years previously. In 1880 Mr. Spreckels paid the Princess Ruth $10,000 to release her claim to a small tract of these lands, although she had never ascended the throne. The act of the legislature by which these lands were made ‘inalienable, to descend to the heirs and successors of the Hawaiian crown (N. B., not of any Kamehameha) forever,’ has never been reversed, the constitution expressly confirming this by the words, the ‘successor elected shall become a new stirps for a royal family, regulated by the same law as the present royal family.’

“Were Kalakaua, Liliuokalani, or Kaiulani, of another race (instead of having, as they most certainly have, the blood of Kamehamehas), it would still be true that no intelligent lawyer would invest the money of his client in a tract of hereditary crown land unless the living representatives were to join in the deed. It is just possible that the lawyers who have visited Washington know these facts, as the first two articles of their conveyance to us by treaty are only quit claim deeds; they expressly limit the grantors’ warrant to that which at this date belongs to them. Any person could execute such a conveyance to the White House estate, and it would not convey anything, nor even pretend to put the grantee in possession of anything. Will American capitalists invest at their own risk in land which constitutes one-fourth of the whole proposed territory of Hawaii?”